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Focal Cities Mexico City

Domestic workers at a workshop in Mexico City

In Mexico, 57 per cent of workers are employed in the informal economy – more than half of the employed population. In Mexico City (CDMX), workers in informal employment represent 23 per cent of the economically active population (EAP), compared to 24 per cent in formal employment and 53 per cent not employed. With diverse occupational groups and a new, progressive Constitution (which includes the concept of the right to the city and which recognizes non-salaried workers as workers), the Mexico City context presents unique challenges and opportunities to organize and mobilize informal workers around their needs.

In February 2017, WIEGO began work in Mexico City through the Focal Cities project. Focal Cities CDMX works with a variety of groups in the city – including research institutions, activists and membership-based organizations (MBOs) of informal workers. The occupational groups WIEGO works with in CDMX include (but are not limited to): street vendors, market vendors, recyclers, domestic workers, mariachi musicians, artisans and shoe shiners. The work in Mexico City builds off of the “Voice Project” (carried out between 2011-13) which aimed to foster dialogue between workers and government officials.

NEW VIDEO (October 2018): Exposición Trabajadores Invisibles en la CDMX(Invisible Workers Exhibition at the CDMX): On September 25, 2018, the exhibition "Invisible Workers" opened at el Museo de Memoria y Tolerancia (the Museum of Memory and Tolerance) in Mexico City. This photographic exhibition reveals the precarious working conditions in which the informal waste pickers who clean Mexico City work. (Video only in Spanish).

Specific goals of the project include:

Building capacity of informal workers and their organizations in areas such as: advocacy for policy change, collective bargaining and negotiation, and legal and regulatory frameworks.

Supporting informal workers and their organizations in the development and dissemination of platforms of demands and/or recommendations on inclusive planning and regulatory frameworks in Mexico City.

Supporting MBOs to establish and engage in dialogue and negotiations with city and national public officials to promote mutual understanding and to allow workers to provide input on laws, regulations and social policies that directly affect their livelihoods.

Activities

"Dialogues on Public Space: Informal Work and Mobility"

Held on June 13, 2018, this event--part of our work with Cities Alliance--created a space for dialogue and discussion between informal workers who perform their activities in the public space and activists of groups of pedestrians and cyclists whose mobility agendas sometimes ignore the right to public space as a work space.The dialogue brought together workers from various occupational groups, such as street-vendors, shoeshiners, organ-grinders, waste pickers and tianguistas (market vendor), as well as guests from different groups representing pedestrians and cyclists. The coordinator of the Mexico City Focal City project, Tania Espinoza, and the project assistant of the Mexico City Focal City project Yuleina Carmona presented at the event.

Learning exchanges and capacity building:

Focal Cities CDMX aims to build and strengthen networks of support for informal workers both within the city and across the region. For example, in 2017 Focal Cities CDMX facilitated a Latin American regional exchange of domestic workers, together with the Institute of Leadership Simon de Beauvoir, local domestic worker organization Centro de Apoyo y Capacitación para Empleadas del Hogar (CACEH) and the national domestic worker trade union the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores del Hogar (SINACTRAHO). Over 30 domestic workers from Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Jamaica and Uruguay met to share experiences and discuss strategies on social security legislation and ratification of C189 (ILO Convention 189 on Domestic Workers). During the exchange, workers and support organizations developed a political platform to demand mandatory social security for domestic workers in Mexico based on good practices and lessons learned from other countries, which Mexican domestic workers subsequently presented in the Senate.

Mobilization and advocacy for secondary legislation:

The progressive language in Mexico City’s new constitution has created a reference point and window of opportunity for the development of inclusive secondary legislation for informal workers who work in public space. In 2017, Focal Cities CDMX organized two “mesas,” or weekly standing meetings, with representatives from several different occupational groups to discuss potential secondary legislation for self-employed workers; including a clause-by-clause review of existing regulations and their impact. One of these ongoing mesas brings together shoe shiners, musicians and artisans, while the other involves street vendor groups. The workers’ input on the legislation is bring provided to a legal expert who will create a draft, which will again be reviewed by the workers before it is finalized and used for advocacy.